


body ache

by urieskooki



Series: when they could have been happy [2]
Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-28
Updated: 2016-04-28
Packaged: 2018-06-05 03:45:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6687916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/urieskooki/pseuds/urieskooki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Because Ginshi cares so much, he cares so fucking much that it’s hard to breathe sometimes, when he catches Urie’s eye in a crowded room, when he gets to brush his lips against the curve of Urie’s back, when he lays next to him and hears the soft sighs of his breath as he sleeps, completely unguarded and open and only for Ginshi. <i></i></i><br/> <br/><i>Sometimes he feels like every nerve in his body is thrumming just for Urie Kuki.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	body ache

As a child, Ginshi had always liked playing with fire. He remembers all too vividly lighting matches and seeing how long he could hold them before the fire reached his fingers. He still has the burn marks on his knuckles from dropping them.

Urie is exactly like those matches.

_How long can I hold him before he burns me?_

_How long can he stay in my arms before he lashes out and sting my skin enough for it to blister?_

Ginshi takes his lover’s coldness as a challenge. To woo the un-woo-able. He lingers too long with wrist touches, and the fingers brushing with the passing of the salt at the dinner table, and the brushes of the backs of hands in the hallways on the way to meetings.

_How long before Urie snaps back and his teeth don’t meet thin air? What if I can’t dodge in time?_

“You’re thinking too loud.”

_“I know.”_

“Stop it.”

_“Sorry.”_

“If I wanted someone to waste my time, I’d get Koroiwa to fuck me instead.”

“Yeah,” Ginshi sighs, “I get it, I’m replaceable.”

And Urie just smiles- he can feel it against his neck.

Sometimes Ginshi puts his hand under the table onto Urie’s thigh just to watch him stiffen, face struggling to stay neutral during their important CCG meetings filled with important men in suits (who cheat on their wives yet curl their lips up at Ginshi when they know themselves that they should be more ashamed of their infidelity than Ginshi should be of his ratty coat). They’re always crammed around the table so tightly that nobody even notices the way Ginshi is touching his teammate.

But Urie does and that’s enough to make Ginshi smirk quietly to himself, thumb rubbing over Urie’s knee and up his thigh to make his sentence stutter half-way through, “My apologies, I think I may be on the verge of catching a mild cold.” _“No, no_ , it’s nothing serious, my work will not suffer at all.”

_Smack._

_“Ow!_ Ah, s-sorry, I-I, ah, pinched my arm in my chair.” Ginshi grunts to the table, while underneath it his fingers are pinching Urie’s thigh hard enough that afterwards he finds a bruise when he’s rediscovering the flat planes of Urie’s stomach and the hard muscles of his legs.

And, yes, contrary to popular belief, Urie does actually consider Ginshi _his_ plaything enough to get jealous when he blushes over someone that isn’t him, or talks about how pretty Mado-san is – he’ll fuck him into his mattress hard enough that Ginshi _knows_ that the bruises blooming high up by his jaw are Urie tattooing his own name in Ginshi’s skin.

_Mine._

As much as the older pretends he doesn’t give a shit about Ginshi, he seems to quite obviously want to keep him all to himself, tucked away in his pocket. Responding to his beck and call, every whim, every blowjob in the training room when the others are upstairs.

Maybe Ginshi’s lying when he reassures Urie that he wasn’t really flirting with her, _“I’m all yours, Urie.”_

Maybe he isn’t.

Because, yes, sometimes he asks himself if he loves Urie or he’s just never had anyone seem as invested in caring for him as Urie does. He’s silent about it, but he’s doting when the mood catches him, and he’s sweet when he’s all pliant and fucked out beside Ginshi when they can get the house to themselves (and sometimes when the house is jam packed, they still go upstairs anyway).

It’s not even always _sex._ Sometimes it’s just kissing and lying as close to one another as they can without saying that it’s on purpose. Sometimes it’s just Urie and his sketchbook, curled up beside Ginshi on the couch for as long as they can get away with it. Sometimes, they go on what most people would call _dates,_ but they call them _outings_ instead.

But, God forbid anyone ever mistakes them for being in a relationship. It is strictly sexual, nothing romantic.

It’s what they both tell each other to excuse their intolerable behaviour. _“Don’t date a teammate!”_ Tooru had hissed when he saw Ginshi leave Urie’s room far too late at night to make up some bullshit lie that was easily seen through in a second.

It was easy for Tooru to say – he doesn’t like sex, and he doesn’t like romance, and he especially doesn’t like it when people linger too long when they hug him. It’s a perfectly reasonable excuse for why he finds it so easy to simply _not fuck_ said teammates. ‘Cause he’s not gonna fuck anyone to begin with.

Ginshi has _needs_. And so does Urie. They might as well solve their issues together.

_“Ya know what they say, Tooru, team work makes the dream work!”_

_“Don’t get hurt. You know he’ll only chew you up and spit you out again. He always does.”_

Ginshi’s face had fallen and he’d pushed past Tooru, snapping, _“I know he’ll only hurt me in the end but I don’t care.”_

He’d lain awake in his bed until the sun lit his room in the morning thinking about what Tooru had said.

He knows Tooru was and is _still_ right about Urie. _I should’ve just left him alone, shouldn’t I?_

That doesn’t stop him from brushing their elbows together while they brush their teeth after breakfast, Urie still glaring sleepily at nothing in particular, bedhead so wild that Ginshi can’t help but run his fingers through it on his way out, much to Urie’s irritation.

And it happens every morning, and nothing ever changes regardless of how many times Urie tells him to stop ruffling his damn hair.

It doesn’t stop him from pressing Urie up against the wall of the shower and kissing the damp muscles of his stomach, twitching beneath his fingers and lips and tongue and teeth.

It’s just their routine, no two ways about it.

But they aren’t dating. God, no. Don’t mistake it for something it isn’t, because Urie will get grumpier than usual and refuse to let Ginshi touch him for days.

He can’t have that, can he?

But it isn’t like he _cares_ or anything stupid like that.

…Who _is_ he kidding, really?  
  
Because in actuality, Ginshi cares so much, he cares so _fucking much_ that it’s hard to breathe sometimes, when he catches Urie’s eye in a crowded room, when he gets to brush his lips against the curve of Urie’s back, when he lays next to him and hears the soft sighs of his breath as he sleeps, completely unguarded and open and _only_ for Ginshi.

Sometimes he feels like every nerve in his body is thrumming just for Urie Kuki.

 

* * *

 

 

First names are personal, _too_ personal, he knows. Too personal for someone like Urie to want to use, but when Ginshi gasps out a quiet _“Kuki”_ late at night, pressed so tightly together that Ginshi wonders whether they’ve somehow glued themselves together-

When he gasps out Urie’s first name, the other goes very still, and then his fingers twine in Ginshi’s hair and he’s coming with a stuttered, _“Please,_ Ginshi.”

Ginshi realises that Urie isn’t opposed to it at all, he’s just afraid of the rejection that could come with calling your fuckbuddy (strictly platonic) by his first name out of the blue.

 

* * *

Sleeping with Kuki (actually sleeping this time too) is like sleeping in front of the ashes of a burnt out fire ticking away in a fireplace. It’s warm and comforting, and there’s something about it that feels so otherworldly, so _unfamiliar_ that Ginshi feels like he’s in some kind of alternate universe.

He doesn’t feel like anything’s changed, yet _everything_ changed the minute Ginshi proposed a ~~real~~ date and Kuki accepted with the ghost of a smile lifting his lips and his ears had turned this shade of pretty pink that Ginshi couldn’t stop smiling at.

“Yeah, whatever, I guess. Don’t be late.”

Ginshi had cackled and ducked down to pull him into a kiss, short and sweet, before he’d pulled away with some sly remark about Kuki’s blush and had received a kick in the leg for his efforts.

And now, hours after their first ~~real~~ date, they’re wrapped up in each other in Ginshi’s bed, no kissing, no fucking, just drifting in and out of consciousness until they both finally give in and fall asleep.

The next morning Ginshi asks if he can call Kuki his boyfriend, and Kuki’s face goes _so_ red as he punches Ginshi in the arm, but simultaneously bridges the single centimetre gap in their heights to smash their lips together.

He supposes this must mean it’s an affirmative and he really should tell Sassan they’re _boyfriends_ now, before someone else (Saiko) blabs everything at dinner (again) and they have to listen to Haise try to give them The Talk. _Again_.

But for now he’d rather roll over and press himself tightly to the curve of Kuki’s back while they procrastinate getting out of bed, until Saiko comes and bangs on the door, walking in with her hands over her eyes and tells them to get their asses out of bed before Maman comes to do it himself.

 

* * *

 

 

As a child, Ginshi had always liked more than just playing with matches. He’d liked to run around outside, kicking at the dirt and grass, braiding daises together for Haru so he could slip the crown onto her head and they’d play make believe that she was a Queen of some grand palace and Ginshi was always her humble knight.

He’d read to her before she went to sleep and wait until her breaths were calm and even before crawling into his own bed, even if his was only on the other side of the room he’d find a reason as to why he needed to stay with her until she drifted off.

Now, as an adult, Ginshi doesn’t go outside just to relax as much as he should, and Haru isn’t really all that _there_ in the head enough to justify visiting her every day simply to place a daisy chain on her head (as best he can with all those growths ~~making him sick to his stomach every time he sees them)~~ but he does it anyway, because if she wakes up one of these days, maybe she’ll like to wake up with that there for her, even if Ginshi isn’t.

Now, as an adult, he plays with Kuki’s hair instead, and he never gets snapped at for kissing the nape of Kuki’s neck in the morning like he would’ve when he still called him Urie. And he still gets a little thrill when he gets to say his _boyfriend’s_ first name because it’s such a personal thing, and he’s being _allowed_ to see this delicate side of Kuki that blushes when he kisses his cheek and slings an arm over Ginshi’s hip when he’s sleeping beside him in whichever of their beds they’ve decided on that night.

He’s not entirely sure if he loves Kuki yet, but he knows he cares for him deeply at least, and he knows he could be on his way to love eventually. Maybe one day he’ll even have a chance to say it aloud.

In the meantime, he whispers how deeply he cares for Kuki in between his shoulder blades with his lips pressed to sweat-slicked salty skin, and he pours it into Kuki’s coffee in the place of sugar or cream, and he tells him just by linking their pinkies under the table during important CCG meetings with important CCG businessmen in suits (who _still_ cheat on their wives and sneer at Ginshi). He says he cares in everything he does.

He hopes when Kuki presses his lips to Ginshi’s pulse that he can tell how much his body aches to be all _his_ , and he hopes that every time he lays his head on Ginshi’s chest that he can feel how fast Ginshi’s heart beats for him and everyone else in this damn house.

The hickies on his skin say it all: Kuki knows, and he loves how Ginshi is _his_. Mostly because he’s a possessive bastard who likes to carefully stand close enough that girls flirting _at_ him (rather than with him) know Ginshi’s claimed.

Ginshi doesn’t even mind all that much.

He’s no longer afraid of sharp teeth closing around his neck and ripping his vocal cords out – because now he’s felt the ‘fangs of the beast’ on his throat many times, and he finds it kinda enjoyable.

“You’re thinking too loud. What are you always thinking about?”

“You.”

“…”

“I’m just happy ya kept me instead of letting me go like I thought ya’d do.”

And then Kuki smiles, and Ginshi doesn’t think he’s ever seen something so beautiful in his life.

**Author's Note:**

> lmao hi i'm going to give the shiraurie tag the love and care it needs by myself!!! pfft i love writing these two whoops thank you for reading! feedback is v v v much appreciated!


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